This watch has since then obtained an extensive historical reputation, and it is preserved in the archives of the Clockmakers' Company as one of their most valuable treasures, for it is the earliest known English jewelled watch, and is the identical instrument produced before the House of Commons Committee, as evidence to upset, and which did upset, poor Facio's claim for an extension of patent. Alas, for ancient reputations, it has been but recently discovered that Huggeford's watch was but a fraud, and that the jewel on the cock which deceived the Parliamentary Committee into supposing that Ignatius Huggeford, an Englishman, had applied jewels to watches long before Facio had been heard of, _has nothing to do with the working_ of the watch. The jewel has been merely stuck on, just in the place where a jewel should be; but as it is only fixed to the surface of the brass and no pivot plays in the jewel, it may be averred that the amethyst has no more to do with the movement of the watch than the silver ornaments on the watch-case. It is clear by the words in Facio's petition that his application of jewelling to watches was not merely done with the idea of ornamenting them,--in that there would have been no novelty,--and it seems probable that the amethyst would have been placed upon the face of the watch if the object of inserting it anywhere had simply been ornamentation; to speak plainly, none other than a fraudulent purpose could be served by its being placed where it is. It is, we fear, not impossible that the jewel was placed there at the insistence of some of the members of the Clockmakers' Company, who, being perhaps jealous of the foreign invention, and fearful of its effects upon their own private trade, were still unable to prevent the grant of a patent, in May, 1703, for fourteen years to the inventor. But by December of that year, when application was made for the extension of the patent, they had had time to consider affairs and to prepare their opposition. We may believe this watch to have been Ignatius Huggeford's, and to have been all that it was sworn to be by the members of that Company, but, when we remark that neither is any mention whatever made by them, nor, as far as it appears, any question asked of them before the Parliamentary Committee as to the jewel being upon the cock during the whole of the time of its being in their possession, we cannot but arrive at the conclusion that the jewel was placed upon Huggeford's old watch--the date of which could be shown--at the order of some of the members of the Clockmakers' Company with the purpose of defeating the patent, and that the Committee of the House of Commons were not as careful as they ought to have been in inspecting the jewel, for if they had, they must have seen the want of connexion between the amethyst and the pivot, which, it was pretended, was working in it. The probability is that at this time our English